ONLINE SHOPPER

ONLINE SHOPPER; Home Front? Combat? A Mission for Barbie

By Michelle Slatalla

Published: October 18, 2001

A LOT of people don't remember Army Barbie.

My 4-year-old daughter, Clementine, for instance, has never seen the doll, which was introduced by Mattel in the early 1990's in a Desert Storm camouflage uniform so authentic that it received the Pentagon's stamp of approval. Clementine's beloved collection of Barbies, which she spread out on the kitchen table one day last week, consists of frizzy-haired, missing-an-arm-and-wearing-one-purple-shoe dolls. Her favorite is a naked Barbie with C-L-e-M written across its chest in blue ink.

In Clem's chubby hands, the Barbies were talking about the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on America.

Naked Barbie: ''Let's play something bad.''

''Like war?'' asked Bald-Spot Barbie, whose scalp was shaved during a happier time when the dolls operated a beauty parlor.

Naked Barbie: ''War is sad.''

Bald-Spot Barbie: ''War is when the World Buildings fell down on the White House.''

Naked Barbie: ''Yes, and there were real people inside. You know that?''

Bald-Spot Barbie: ''I will hit you.''

I hope that some day soon the Barbies can resume their more innocent lives as hair stylists. Last week, however, as their scuffling knocked a salt shaker to the floor, it occurred to me that Clementine might like to play with Army Barbie as well.

But before I went online to check the availability of the mostly discontinued military Barbies (the doll has served in the Air Force, the Marines and the Navy as well), I made a critical mistake: I informed my husband of my plans. Replying by instant message, he objected on the ground that ''a doll who wears makeup in battle is creepy.''

Of course, this unleashed all my old contradictory feelings about the doll with the improbable measurements. At times I have dismissed Barbie as a bad role model who plays to a ditzy obsession with hair and high heels. But there's a reason that Mattel sells two Barbies every second: little girls like to play with her. I did. Well, truthfully, I was more interested in lining up her shoes neatly in the accessories case, but let's save analysis of that for another time.

I needed to figure out whether to encourage a particular little girl to play war with Barbies.

''It might help her to feel in control,'' said M. G. Lord, the author of ''Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll'' (William Morrow, 1994). ''Barbie is an adult-figure doll, and psychologists have known for a long time that children under stress who are totally controlled by adults like to manipulate adult-figure dolls.''

''Barbie certainly has an adult figure,'' I said.

''Actually, you could look at Barbie as being important, because she's the totem of everything the terrorists who attacked us hate,'' Ms. Lord said. ''I've been thinking about how she's the archetype of the single, undraped, supersexualized American female, a woman who has a job and a boyfriend and is liberated.''

When she put it that way, I started to feel patriotic about my impulse to buy Barbie.

I learned that a lot of other shoppers were thinking the same way. Although Mattel had stopped making most of the military dolls by the mid-1990's, the enduring popularity of Barbie had spawned a healthy secondary market among retailers who stockpile the dolls while they are in production. Some online stores that specialize in selling still-in-the-box dolls from discontinued series report that interest in military Barbies has soared since Sept. 11.

At Margie's Dollhouse (www

.margiesdollhouse.com), so many shoppers started asking about the dolls that the owners, Margie and Don Napoletano, added a clickable icon to the home page in late September to allow shoppers to quickly view the military Barbies. Last week the site was selling 13 different dolls from the military collection at prices from $39 to $99. Even at $59, Naval Petty Officer Barbie was tough to pass up in those snappy black heels, until I imagined what might happen to her tiny navigational maps if Clementine got her hands on them.

''We don't have that many military Barbies left,'' Mr. Napoletano said. ''I think it's because people are looking to buy something that will show their patriotism, and Barbie has always been an icon.''

At El Dorado Toys (eldoradotoys

.com), which was offering 12 different military Barbie dolls last week at prices from $20 to $59.59 (for a Stars 'n Stripes Ken and Barbie Army Set), ''we've had people purchasing them like crazy,'' said Karen Laux, a store employee. But recently, she said, there has been a lull: ''The last one I sold was Marine Ken, on the second of October. I don't know if that means the trend is over.''

Plenty are available on eBay (www.ebay.com), where a search for ''Army Barbie'' turned up 55 auctions. You could also bid on dozens of the recent special-edition Barbies licensed for sale exclusively at American military bases, Boot Camp Barbie and Paratrooper Barbie.

I bid $35 for an Army Barbie and Ken Deluxe Set No. 5626 from 1993. Some collectors might turn up their noses at the dented box, but I figured that Clementine would discard the box in minutes. Then my bid failed to meet the seller's reserve price.

One site where you could not buy military Barbies last week was that of Mattel's new online partner, Walmart.com (walmart.com). At Mattel's Barbie site (barbie.com), which does not sell merchandise, shoppers were encouraged to visit the Barbie Boutique at Walmart.com's site. There the selection featured Mattel's new holiday Nutcracker Barbies, including a Sugarplum Princess Barbie ($19.96) in ballet costume and a pink and purple plastic Marzipan Horse and Candy Sleigh ($29.67) that would have made Tchaikovsky wince. But no combat Barbies.

I called Christina DeRosa, vice president for Web site and media in Mattel's girls' division, to complain.

''My daughter is not playing Nutcracker these days,'' I said. ''She's playing war.''

''Well, the best thing about Barbie is that she can be whoever you want her to be,'' Ms. DeRosa pointed out. ''That's why there's always a relevancy to Barbie.''

I couldn't see much relevance in the Nutcracker Barbies. If Sugarplum Princess Barbie went head to head with Bald-Spot Barbie, somebody's gold tresses were going to get mussed.

That's when I realized I didn't need to buy any more Barbies, and certainly not combat-ready Barbies. Any one in Clementine's current collection would do just fine: they've seen battle already. With their

disheveled ponytails and tattoos, it's the peacetime roles they might have trouble playing convincingly. I hope they face that challenge soon.